The Poverty of Historicism (Paperback)

~ Karl R. Popper (Author) "IN strong opposition to methodological naturalism in the field of sociology, historicism claims that some of the characteristic methods of physics cannot be applied to..." (more)
Key Phrases: historicist moral theory, piecemeal experiments, inverse deduction, Professor Hayek, Logic of Scientific Discovery, Professor Toynbee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...it is good to have this brilliant book at last available in English." -- The [London] Times

"Popper's work is of far greater than mere academic value; it has an immediate and manifest bearing on the political decisions that everyone has to make." -- The Listener

"Probably the only book published this year which will outlive this century." -- Arthur Koestler

"This is one of the three or four most important books of the methodology of the social sciences to appear since the war." -- New Statesman

Product Description

The Poverty of Historicism is a devastating criticism of the belief in the laws of history, social development, and progress. It exposes pernicious and influential doctrines and the ideologies erected on them, while offering a systematic and brief account of new ideas for the character and methods of the social sciences, including an indication of the kind of piecemeal political planning which these methods suggest.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (January 28, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415065690
• ISBN-13: 978-0415065696
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,688,243 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gives inspiring ideas and insights into the history., February 23, 1998

By A Customer

This book is not your easy bedtime reading -- it's serious and requires a reader's thought to travel along the author's walks and remember his points. But the rewards are big -- Popper comes close to defining the method of the field I would call "societal engineering".

Popper's main points to me are:

1. You can't plan and carry out a reform of the whole society. Reason - the people who carry out reforms are themselves changed by reforms. They loose relative objectivity and can no longer see clearly the original plan of reform and follow it.

2. You can plan and carry out changes in a relatively small sector or in a narrow field. Reason - it's possible to receive objective feedback and act on it to steer the reform into the objectives of the original plan.

Examples from Soviet history that startled me:

1. A failure of Lenin and Bolsheviks to change society. They created a plan and did they try -- but the resulting system (in which I was born) instead of changing according to plan, just fed them the data their plans required. Even more almost all the originators of changes were destroyed by these changes.

2. A relative success of the NEP (New Economic Politics) initiated by Lenin and his associates. It dealt with relatively narrow field - small to middle businesses and it had definite goal -- to feed hungry country of the post-World War I Soviet Russia. And it did succeed! The NEP was stopped by Stalin, who unsuccessfully continued to implement plans to change whole society.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fallacy of Utopian Engineering, October 18, 2002

By	Esther Nebenzahl (Cascais Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Poverty of Historicism (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

Sir Popper is considered one of the most important thinkers in the area of philosophy of science. "The Poverty of Historicism" despite its complexity, carries a fundamental simple message: prediction over the course of history (its social and economic implications) is nothing more than a fantasy, an illusion. And this assertion is based on the principle that the events/persons responsible for changes are themselves affected by these same changes. It is Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty applied to social sciences!
Historicism is the theory that history develops itself according to pre-determined, inexorable laws with a fixed objective or end. Fascism and communism were laid upon these presuppositions, and the course fo history has proven the fallacy (therefore poverty) of such assumptions. The attempt to have a holistic approach by eliminating individual differences through "brain washing" is incompatible with critical thought, and although it will bring about a concentration of power it will also cause an erosion of knowledge. The Poverty of Historicism becomes a poverty of imagination, of the ability of critical judgement and analysis. Historicism, according to Karl Popper preposterously assumes the postion of having discovered the problem of "change," but revolutions are not unique to our modern era and the metaphysical speculation of what constitutes "change" has been addressed since the time of Heraclitus.
The goal of applying scientific methods with the same accuracy and predictability as those in theoretical physics is bound to end in failure when it concerns the course of history. The influence of the prediction upon the predicted events is here being termed as the "Oedipus effect." Physics can arrive at universally valid uniformities, whereas sociology must be contented with the intuitive understanding of unique events, and of the role they play in particular situations, occuring within particular struggles of interests, tendencies and destinies. If sociological laws determine the degree of anything, they will do so only in very vague terms, and will permit, at the best, a very rough scaling.
Karl Popper who was a fierce advocate of democrary and social critiscim, dedicated this book to all of those who have been victims to the fascist and communist belief in the inexorable laws of historical destiny.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a demolishing critic to the Ideological Marxism, August 16, 1996

By A Customer

Karl Popper is one of the best thinkers about philosophy and Political theory. Two of his greatest merits are, in order: The first is his coherent life (congruence between thougths and acts) and the other is that when this book came up first (it took about 18 years to be translated from German to English), the historycal timing (1950's) was the worst: Everybody thought that the Marxist theory regarding the history was right and scientifically proven. Sir Popper demonstrated all errors of the Marxism from the ideolodical point of view, and that's why the name of the book. Also, Mr. Popper was the only deep critiziser of Karl Marx.